Coffee to prepare the palate...

[michel]

Received a new copy of Jim Murray's whisky bible 2004 today, where he writes the following:
Preparing your palate
Usually I drink a black coffee without sugar before tasting whisky. At home, I roast, blend and grind my own coffee – often using up to six different types of bean – to create whatever taste I feel my palate needs. The beauty of black coffee is that it has the ability to neutralise all other tastes and the bitterness means that your palate is primed to detect any sweetness lurking within a whisky. The balance and complexity of a whisky can be easily overlooked or misunderstood by residual sweetness on the palate.

[Joey]

Wow! Smart man. I experienced something similar in Dubai: In a huge shopping center I was sniffing different parfums. That they offered me a cup of coffee I thought was just nice customer service, but between the different scents, they gave me a bowl of roasted coffee beans to take a smell at -and it was really neutralizing!
joey